Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins will
reinvent the cyborg saga with a storyline to be told over a three-movie
span. The film is set in the future, in a full-scale war between Skynet
and humankind.

On January 6th 2008, producer John Middleton had the
following to say about the movie: "It's post-apocalyptic. It's set after
the events of [Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines], where we see the
nuclear exchange at the end of the movie, and we show what the world is
like after this event, and we show how people try to deal in a
post-apocalyptic world. And we introduce a new character, who becomes very
important to the resistance and to John Connor, a new hero. It's really
about the birth of a new hero."

About John Conner, he said: "I would look at him as a
character that is introduced and that will grow in the second and third
movies of the trilogy."

On Arnold Schwarzenegger's involvement in the film: "He
has been approached, and in the early days of our development of T4,
one of our producers, Andy Vajna, who's a good friend of his, spoke to him
about doing a cameo. This was even before he was governor. But we know now
that he is governor, he's got priorities that are above doing movies."

PLOT

In this new instalment of The Terminator film
franchise, set in post-apocalyptic 2018, Christian Bale stars as John
Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its
army of Terminators.

But the future Connor was raised to believe in is
altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a
stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide
whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past.

As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an
odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet's operations, where they
uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.

WE SAY

To be honest we weren’t all that excited when a fourth
Terminator movie was announced. And when it
emerged that Arnie will only have a small cameo in it (if at all!) and
that it will be directed by the pretentiously named McG whose credentials include the brainless Charlie’s Angels movies we just
rolled our eyes and gave up on the whole affair.

After all, when one is honest about it, the three
Terminator movies made thus far are basically the same movie made over
and over again: an artificial intelligence from a future in which mankind
is battling for its survival against said machines sends an unstoppable
killing machine back in time to kill the man who will lead the human
resistance before he is born or just a boy.

But it seems the future has finally arrived . . .

When it became apparent that Terminator 4 won’t
be rehashing that whole plot again (after all, how can they after the
ending of Terminator 3 – Rise of the Machines?)
and that it will be largely set in the post-apocalyptic landscape in which
humanity is pitted in a desperate battle for survival only glimpsed in the
various movies we perked up. When they cast new action god Christian Bale
(Batman in The Dark Knight) we really
started paying attention. Hey, this new Terminator flick just might
be worth checking out after all . . .

And then came that teaser trailer . . .

So: consider us excited. Terminator Salvation as
the fourth movie is now officially titled just might be a worthy entry in
the franchise, one that might even equal any of Jim Cameron’s entries
(come on! did you see that trailer?). Or will at least be better than the
tired rehash that was Rise of the Machines . . .